Reaching Vulnerable Populations in Fragile Environments

NORC’s cultural sensitivity builds trust and provides access

Studying victims of war, food insecurity, economic exploitation, and other crises requires care to avoid re-victimization and presents difficult methodological challenges in identifying and sampling respondents. NORC’s researchers and survey design specialists have proven themselves more than up to the task. NORC led three mixed-method performance evaluations of USAID’s Food for Peace programs in rural communities located in the most food insecure regions of Niger. The programs promote changes in nutrition, health, and hygiene behavior; more effective sanitation and agricultural practices; and the empowerment of women and adolescent girls, with the goal of strengthening household and community resilience.

NORC led 56 focus groups in 28 communities across 3 different regions of Niger.

NORC has also significantly expanded its work in countering human trafficking. To inform counter-trafficking programming at USAID, NORC researchers are surveying and providing analytic work on human trafficking in Honduras, Guatemala, Cambodia, Peru, and the Philippines aimed at measuring both the prevalence of human trafficking and the experience of victims. NORC is two years in on an ambitious four-year program with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs to measure the prevalence of child labor in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.